Arbitrator rejects suit in sidewalk vandalism

Bill Gang

Tuesday, Aug. 4, 1998 | 10:52 a.m.

The lawsuit filed by the mother of 9-year-old Jeremy Anderson, who admitted vandalizing 348 feet of freshly poured sidewalk, didn't impress an arbitrator.

Timothy Williams ruled Friday in favor of the developer who had commissioned the concrete sidewalk and Metro Police, which had arrested the boy for his crime.

Barbara Anderson had complained that her son had been strip searched after his arrest and held incommunicado for hours by police while being questioned.

Although her son admitted responsibility for his acts, Barbara Anderson's anger at Metro and Plaster Development resulted in the lawsuit because "money is what teaches them."

But it is Anderson who must pay under the arbitrator's ruling.

Williams ordered that she pay $250 to Metro attorney Walt Cannon and Plaster Development lawyer Richard Avila to cover costs incurred in fighting the lawsuit.

Anderson, who was represented by attorney Robert Kossack, now has 30 days to decide whether to accept the arbitrator's ruling or demand a trial before a District Court judge.

Anderson said the lawsuit never would have been necessary if authorities hadn't pursued criminal charges against her son, arresting him at his school and holding him for hours at the juvenile detention center without notifying her.

"Can you put a price on not having him come off the bus or having him strip searched or kept from making a phone call?" she asked early in the case.

When the now-10-year-old boy was sentenced on April 30, 1997, Juvenile Hearing Master Sylvia Beller questioned whether he had learned his lesson in the months since the November 1996 incident.

The boy and his mother had been on several national news shows and complained in national magazines about his incarceration and interrogation without Barbara Anderson being present.

Deputy District Attorney Bob Teuton had commented cynically at the April 1997 hearing, "I think he has learned to hire an attorney and jack everything around."

Jeremy Anderson had pleaded no contest to a gross misdemeanor charge although he maintained that a workman had given him permission to scrawl in the went cement. He was put on probation for his crime.

Virtually the entire stretch of sidewalk near Washington Avenue and Durango Drive was marked with the names of Jeremy and his friends and other words in foot-high letters.